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Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: December 9th, 2025
  • RalfWausE@feddit.orgtoLinux@lemmy.ml•You can now use Debian without Linux
    11·
    5 days ago

    In short: The stability is really a problem - at least it was at the time when i tried it out. I don’t know how often something that i worked with just, well, stopped working and the message ‘Computer bought the farm’ appeared. Sometimes a crashing X session dragged the whole system with it into the abyss freezing the whole system and requiering a reset… followed by a lengthy fsck session. And it was slow. I mean, granted, the Thinkpad R60 i used it on isn’t a supercomputer by todays standards, but compared to a Linux system or even OpenBSD it was really, really slow.

    I have a high pain tolerance regarding software, i really have… but i had to give up on it after a while.

    But now, with this new release… well, i think i will give it another go.

    I just rediscovered that i indeed made a little writeup of my first days with the Hurd in my Gopherhole back then, perhaps it gives a bit of the taste what it was when i tried it. Beware, wall of text after the spoiler:

    My Phlog post about the Hurd

    Oh it HURDs…

    I think i have some undiagnosed masochistic tendencies, because i am constantly drawn to ever more esorteric and fringe operating systems and software that will make my life a little bit harder.

    The HURD is something that got my attention a long, long time ago, as being this “mysterious next-gen OS that will change everything”. Well, it was the late 90s / early 00s, the CD was still king and dialup was really expensive (at least here in germany). I was already messing around with linux and most of the time i compensated my utter lack of knowledge with determination and pure madness.

    It was some holiday back in the very early 00s when i managed to get it installed on my (i think) pentium 133, after spending way too long on our very slow dialup line to download the necessary files from some GNU mirror (and learning later that i burned through a whole lot Deutsche Mark after my parents received the telephone bill)

    Well, my adventure back then ended in an booting system but without any recognized keyboard, and without really knowing what i am doing (and in need of that PC for my apprenticeship at that time) i threw the towel after some really long nights without getting anywhere. Beaten and defeated i reinstalled Windows and (i think) Debian Linux again and went on to mess with other things. But somehow (like with some other failed projects) it left a scar that sometimes itches.

    Now, fast forward about 20 years, its a very slow day at the office, i have nothing really pressing to do and… right out of the blue a GNU is sneaking into my thoughts. I fired up a browser, skimmed the web about news regarding my white whale and found out (somewhat to my surprise) that Hurd is still in active development (even if its going forward at an glacial pace). So, after having messed around with some fairly exotic systems and (thinking to have) much more experience than my teenage self i thought it is on time to take a ride on this bovine again.

    Debian Hurd seemed to me the most viable option, so i went right on, downloaded three DVD images of 2021 vintage while absolutely missing the very-not-missable news about an 2023 version until after i had already downloaded the images and burned them to three disks. Well… one can always update later, right?

    So, i grabbed my “spare” Thinkpad T60 out of the cabinet, looked at the HDD to make sure i had nothing there that i needed and started the installation… nothing too exotic there, its debian based after all…

    After some time the installation was finished, i rebooted into the new system and… FOXTROTT UNIFORM CHARLY KILO!!! … the keyboard wasn’t working. WHY??? It did work in the installer???

    After reading through some sites on the net (and yes, i understand the hardware support is slim, there are only a handfull of developers left etc, etc…) and not wanting to repeat my first encounter with the hurd i thought to myself:

    Why not try it on the R60? So, i took the HD from the T60, put it into the R60, started the installation again, just to be sure, then the dreaded moment of the reboot came… AND I HAD A WORKING KEYBOARD. YESSS!

    So, now i started exploring this system i had waited about 20 years to get running, the GNU and debian sites give a nice overview what does work in which ways, and after all, its not THAT different from your standard GNU/Linux system.

    An interesting concept is that of the “translators”, just to give an short example:

    If you run the following in your home directory

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    settrans -ac ftp /hurd/ftpfs ftp.gnu.org

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    It creates the folder “ftp” wherein you will find the content of ftp.gnu.org. Granted, for anyone who has worked with Plan 9 or has used FUSE this is not THAT of a revelation, but it is nice… making it possible to layer translators (e.g. for accessing an iso on the ftp server) makes it even a bit nicer.

    Now i still had only the three DVDs as package sources, so, thinking that it would be the most safe-ish option to first upgrading everything to the 2023 release i followed an article on the debian pages and added the following to my sources.lst (after commenting out the DVDs):

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    deb [check-valid-until=no trusted=yes] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian-ports/20230606T000000Z/ sid main

    deb [check-valid-until=no trusted=yes] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian-ports/20230606T000000Z/ unreleased main

    deb-src [check-valid-until=no trusted=yes] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20230606T000000Z/ sid main

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    After that i ran an apt update, installed the debian-archive-ports-keyring package, upgraded everything, initiated a reboot while praying to the mighty GNU that it will come up again.

    It did. Everything worked fine.

    So, now on the 2023 release, i thought that it would be nice not being stuck on this

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-ports unstable main

    deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable main deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-ports unreleased main

    %<-----------------------------------------------------

    And, again, i initiated an update followed by an upgrade.

    Aaaand it broke the install. “I am idiot. Shoot me” to quote an romanian friend of mine. Well, back to square one then… now, knowing that it is possible to get a working install, i downloaded the 2023 netinstall ISO and started all over again.

    The install from the netinstall media did go as planned until i reached the point where it wanted me to select an debian mirror, started to scan its content… and froze.

    Ok, its unstable software, something like that may happen. I rebooted, started the installation again and it did freeze again.

    Well… at this point i reached my frustration zenit, it was already late so i somewhat rage-quitted for the day.

    Ok, the next evening i was back at it again. THIS time the installer was able to scan the mirror and finish the installation. After the reboot it booted up normally… only to freeze during boot. Okay, its still unfinished software… hard-reset and another try. Just… something during this failed boot attempt seemed to have messed up the ext2 filesystem that bad that fsck could not repair it on its own.

    That was the last buckling of that bovine that threw me off again. I needed a break, junior needed attention, and just-too-many things at home needed my attention as an handyman.

    Addendum

    Another day, new luck… lets try it again. I thought to myself: Well, you got a functional installed system out of the 2021 version, so try it again with this approach. And following my steps above up until after the upgrade to the 2023 version and… everything still works!

    Now setting up X and an desktop environment was just a piece of cake after that. Is this GNU now tamed? I don’t think so, but at least i got the reins of the bovine and now its really time to explore this ecosystem.